From a Headache to a Dystopian Fantasy Universe: The Surprising Origins of Rising Ember

Discover how a single sentence from my husband during a migraine spiraled into a clean dystopian fantasy series full of elemental powers, rebellion, and love.

One day I had a massive headache. The world was on pause while I lay there with my eyes closed, waiting for the meds to kick in. My husband held me and caressed my hair. The problem was, I was wide awake and needed to get a million things done. So I did what any storyteller or bookworm would do. I asked him to tell me a story. And he did.

This is what he came up with:

"There was a world with people, and they have fire eyes. They wield fire. Like they can turn it on and off like a switch."

That was it. The entire story. It only took that one line to get me piecing everything together in my head. Soon I had a short story rough draft written in the world (read Altered Rain). To get inside the characters' heads, I listened to "Lacrymosa" by Evanescence on repeat. That story pulled a novella out of me next, one that peeks into a world already overtaken by the antagonist (read Ruined Ashes). One line from a man trying to distract his wife from a headache led to a short story, a novella, and a full six-book series.

At first, I didn't know if the story was pure fantasy or pure dystopian. Some scenes leaned fantasy, horses, medieval-style weaponry. Then one day a scene formed of the protagonist heading to the upper levels on a lift, and I saw the realm more clearly.

This world is built on the ruins of the past. Futuristic technology exists, but it doesn't work everywhere, and your access to it depends on your societal status. So sometimes a horse or an old-world weapon is exactly what you need. It's a blend of old and new, hovercars and force fields in the city, rural communities that feel pulled from old-world fantasy. That mix is something I come back to in everything I write.

I love writing what I want to read, but I also knew that wasn't enough to actually publish a book. I needed to understand what readers of this genre were hoping to find. So I read my way through the top YA dystopian and fantasy titles, traditional and indie, to figure out where my story belonged.

You can't read through YA dystopian without running into The Hunger Games. What I admire most is how many layers Suzanne Collins weaves in, right down to small, human details like Katniss feeling uncomfortable in her own clothes. And of course, the arena. I kept that high-stakes, life-or-death competition in my own world, filtered through a lens that's part American Ninja Warrior, part your worst nightmare.

But I still needed a way in for the fantasy side. How do fire wielders fit into a dystopian world? Books like Red Queen showed me one answer: give your heroine real power and real agency from the start. I also found two indie series set in a shared world, Recruitment and The Crue Chronicles, where the tension between the elite and the newly powerful struck the exact chord of rebellion I wanted. And Shadow and Bone sold me on the blend of old-world and new-world tech living side by side.

Where I part ways with Red Queen is the heat level. I'd rather sit inside the moment two characters hold hands for the first time, or the confession that slips out in the middle of a battle, than cut to black. My romances go as far as a kiss and no further. High stakes, not high heat. That's the promise I want every reader to be able to count on when they pick up one of my books.

A lot of YA dystopian and YA fantasy has love triangles running through it, and that's another place I tend to part ways with the genre. I'm not really a fan of the trope, save for a few exceptions. Someone always ends up with a broken heart, and I just can't stomach it. I'd rather watch two people find their way to each other and stay there. That's why I smash love triangles into straight lines with twists. There might be a villain or two involved, but you'll know they were never meant for her from the very beginning.

By the time I came up for air, I realized I wasn't writing pure fantasy or pure dystopian. I was writing dystopian fantasy, and that's exactly where I want to live as a writer.

From there, the world of Rising Ember took shape: a futuristic kingdom that imprisons and discriminates against fire-wielding humans, descendants of an ancient accident, because they're seen as "other." My protagonist is an orphan, a survivor of past genocide, which felt true to the world I'd built rather than a trope tacked on.

I've always been drawn to stories where futuristic tech and elemental magic coexist. A reader once told me she was a fantasy reader who secretly considered herself a sci-fi queen, and I hear some version of that a lot. Fantasy readers will watch sci-fi. They don't always read it. Maybe that's because I grew up on Disney princess movies and Star Trek in equal measure. Maybe it's because I loved The Lord of the Rings just as much as I devoured The Handmaid's Tale. Either way, that combination, sci-fi and fantasy with a romance running through it, has taken root in everything I write. The swoony dance scenes and beautiful dresses always find their way in too.

A story's origin is rarely just one thing. It's a lifetime of reading, writing, and dreaming, filtered through whatever life hands you that day, even a headache. That single sentence from my husband was the spark. Everything else I'd ever loved was the fuel.

Want to explore this dystopian fantasy world for yourself?

Click to explore The Ember Crown Series

Sara Wright 

High-Stakes, No-Spice Dystopian Fantasy 

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If you haven't read the prequel to the first book in the series, start now!

Ruined Ashes by Sara Wright

The Ember Crown dystopian fantasy series

Divided kingdom.  Escape or perish. Can she survive a fatal uprising?

Ruined Ashes is a emotional prequel short story in the The Ember Crown YA Dystopian fantasy series. If you like heroines who grow, nail-biting drama, and a clean tragic love story, then you’ll love Sara Wright’s action-packed adventure.

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